Many wireless communication systems employ transceiver stations or radio heads to provide service within geographical service areas, where the boundaries of a service area are determined by the radio coverage of its associated transceiver station. Wireless service is provided to user equipment (UE) devices over radio frequency carriers (carriers) within each service area, where a carrier is the modulated waveform that conveys the physical channels as specified by the associated wireless technology standard. These service areas are sometimes referred to as “cells”.
Although the term “cell” sometimes refers to the geographical area where multiple uplink and downlink resources (e.g., pairs of uplink and downlink carriers) are used, increasingly the term “cell” is used to refer to the geographical service area where a single uplink resource and a single downlink resource are used to communicate with the UE devices. For example, where Time Division Duplex (TDD) is used, a single frequency channel is used within the cell and uplink and downlink channels are allocated different time periods. Where Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) is used, a single uplink/downlink frequency channel pair (one uplink frequency channel and one downlink frequency channel) is used within a “cell”.
As discussed herein, one or more resources (carrier pairs) may be used in a service area. As a result, a service area may be a single cell or may contain multiple cells. In one common arrangement, each service area is adjacent to several other service areas to provide ubiquitous coverage over a large geographical area.
In some systems, when capacity requirements are lower, a communication station may be deactivated, such it is not capable of providing wireless service, and, when capacity requirements are higher, the communication station may be activated and begin providing wireless service to one or more UE devices that are within its service area. As discussed below, techniques are needed to determine whether a deactivated communication station should be activated.